The Greatest Works of E. F. Benson (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
of secrecy, would know, and even if under further promises of secrecy they communicated their secret to each other, there would be no harm done . . .
After this excursion into Elysian fields, poor Miss Mapp had to get back to her vulture again, and the hour's rest that she had felt was due to herself as the heroine of a duel became a period of extraordinary cerebral activity. Puzzle as she might, she could make nothing whatever of the portmanteau and the excursion to the early train, and she got up long before her hour was over, since she found that the more she thought, the more invincible were the objections to any conclusion that she drowningly grasped at. Whatever attack she made on this mystery, the garrison failed to march out and surrender but kept their flag flying, and her conjectures were woefully blasted by the forces of the most elementary reasons. But as the agony of suspense, if no fresh topic of interest intervened, would be frankly unendurable, she determined to concentrate no more on it, but rather to commit it to the ice-house or safe of her subconscious mind, from which at will, when she felt refreshed and reinvigorated, she could unlock it and examine it again. The whole problem was more superlatively baffling than any that she could remember having encountered in all these inquisitive years, just as the subject of it was more majestic than any, for it concerned not hoarding, nor visits of the Prince of Wales, nor poppy-trimmed gowns, but life and death and firing of deadly pistols. And should love be added to this august list? Certainly not by her, though Tilling might do what it liked. In fact Tilling always did.
She walked across to the bow-window from which she had conducted so many exciting and successful investigations. But today the view seemed as stale and unprofitable as the world appeared to Hamlet, even though Mrs Poppit at that moment went waddling down the street and disappeared round the corner where the dentist and Mr Wyse lived. With a sense of fatigue Miss Mapp recalled the fact that she had seen the housemaid cleaning Mr Wyse's windows yesterday — ("Children dear, was it yesterday?") — and had noted her industry, and drawn from it the irresistible conclusion that Mr Wyse was probably expected home. He usually came back about mid-October, and let slip allusions to his enjoyable visits in Scotland and his villeggiatura (so he was pleased to express it) with his sister the Contessa di Faraglione at Capri. That Contessa Faraglione was rather a mythical personage to Miss Mapp's mind: she was certainly not in a medieval copy of Who's Who? which was the only accessible handbook in matters relating to noble and notable personages, and though Miss Mapp would not have taken an oath that she did not exist, she saw no strong reason for supposing that she did. Certainly she had never been to Tilling, which was strange as her brother lived there, and there was nothing but her brother's allusions to certify her. About Mrs Poppit now: had she gone to see Mr Wyse or had she gone to the dentist? One or other it must be, for apart from them that particular street contained nobody who counted, and at the bottom it simply conducted you out into the uneventful country. Mrs Poppit was all dressed up, and she would never walk in the country in such a costume. It would do either for Mr Wyse or the dentist, for she was the sort of woman who would like to appear grand in the dentist's chair, so that he might be shy of hurting such a fine lady. Then again, Mrs Poppit had wonderful teeth, almost too good to be true, and before now she had asked who lived at that pretty little house just round the corner, as if to show that she didn't know where the dentist lived! Or had she found out by some underhand means that Mr Wyse had come back, and had gone to call on him and give him the first news of the duel, and talk to him about Scotland? Very likely they had neither of them been to Scotland at all: they conspired to say that they had been to Scotland and stayed at shooting-lodges (keepers' lodges more likely) in order to impress Tilling with their magnificence . . .
Miss Mapp sat down on the central-heating pipes in her window, and fell into one of her reconstructive musings. Partly, if Mr Wyse was back, it was well just to run over his record; partly she wanted to divert her mind from the two houses just below, that of Major Benjy on the one side and that of Captain Puffin on the other, which contained the key to the great, insoluble mystery, from conjecture as to which she wanted to obtain relief. Mr Wyse, anyhow, would serve as a mild opiate, for she had never lost an angry interest in him. Though he was for eight months of the year, or thereabouts, in Tilling, he was never, for a single hour, of Tilling. He did not exactly invest himself with an air of condescension and superiority — Miss Mapp did him that justice — but he made other people invest him with it, so that it came to the same thing: he was invested. He did not drag the fact of his sister being the Contessa Faraglione into conversation, but if talk turned on sisters, and he was asked about his, he confessed to her nobility. The same phenomenon appeared when the innocent county of Hampshire was mentioned, for it turned out that he knew the county well, being one of the Wyses of Whitchurch. You couldn't say he talked about it, but he made other people talk about it . . . He was quite impervious to satire on such points, for when, goaded to madness, Miss Mapp had once said that she was one of the Mapps of Maidstone, he had merely bowed and said: "A very old family, I believe," and when the conversation branched off on to old families he had rather pointedly said "we" to Miss Mapp. So poor Miss Mapp was sorry she had been satirical . . . But, for some reason, Tilling never ceased to play up to Mr Wyse, and there was not a tea-party or a bridge-party given during the whole period of his residence there to which he was not invited. Hostesses always started with him, sending him round a note with "To await answer", written in the top left-hand corner, since he had clearly stated that he considered the telephone an undignified instrument only fit to be used for household purposes, and had installed his in the kitchen, in the manner of the Wyses of Whitchurch. That alone, apart from Mr Wyse's old-fashioned notions on the subject, made telephoning impossible, for your summons was usually answered by his cook, who instantly began scolding the butcher irrespective and disrespectful of whom you were. When her mistake was made known to her, she never apologized, but grudgingly said she would call Mr Figgis, who was Mr Wyse's valet. Mr Figgis always took a long time in coming, and when he came he sneezed or did something disagreeable and said: "Yes, yes; what is it?" in a very testy manner. After explanations he would consent to tell his master, which took another long time, and even then Mr Wyse did not come himself, and usually refused the proffered invitation. Miss Mapp had tried the expedient of sending Withers to the telephone when she wanted to get at Mr Wyse's, but this had not succeeded, for Withers and Mr Wyse's cook quarrelled so violently before they got to business that Mr Figgis had to calm the cook and Withers to complain to Miss Mapp . . . This, in brief, was the general reason why Tilling sent notes to Mr Wyse. As for chatting through the telephone, which was the main use of telephones, the thing was quite out of the question.
Miss Mapp revived a little as she made this piercing analysis of Mr Wyse, and the warmth of the central-heating pipes, on this baffling day of autumn tints, was comforting . . . No one could say that Mr Wyse was not punctilious in matters of social etiquette, for though he refused three-quarters of the invitations which were showered on him, he invariably returned the compliment by an autograph note hoping that he might have the pleasure of entertaining you at lunch on Thursday next, for he always gave a small luncheon-party on Thursday. These invitations were couched in Chesterfield-terms: Mr Wyse said that he had met a mutual friend just now who had informed him that you were in residence, and had encouraged him to hope that you might give him the pleasure of your company, etc. This was alluring diction: it presented the image of Mr Wyse stepping briskly home again, quite heartened up by this chance encounter, and no longer the prey to melancholy at the thought that you might not give him the joy. He was encouraged to hope . . . These polite expressions were traced in a neat upright hand on paper which, when he had just come back from Italy, often bore a coronet on the top with "Villa Faraglione, Capri" printed on the right-hand top corner and "Amelia" (the name of his putative sister) in sprawling gilt on the left, the whole being lightly erased. Of course he was quite right to filch a few sheets, but it threw rather a lurid light on his character that they should be such grand ones.
Last year only, in a fit of passion at Mr Wyse having refused six invitations running on the plea of other engagements, Miss Mapp had headed a movement, the object of which was that Tilling should not accept any of Mr Wyse's invitations unless he accepted its. This had met with theoretical sympathy; the Bartletts, Diva, Irene, the Poppits had all agreed — rather absently — that it would be a very proper thing to do, but the very next Thursday they had all, including the originator, met on Mr Wyse's doorstep for a luncheon-party, and the movement then and there collapsed. Though they all protested and rebelled against such a notion, the horrid fact remained that everybody basked